Field
The present disclosure relates to the sport of North American football and, more specifically, electronic databases containing information relevant to football.
Background
North American football is an athletic game characterized by a sequence of distinct plays, each of which begins when movement of the ball is initiated by the team in possession of the ball and each of which has a distinct ending. Between plays, the players on the field for each team may huddle to identify the next play that the team will execute. In this context, a play refers to a predetermined set of one or more tasks or assignments for each player on the team. At the most general level, a team will execute three categories of plays, namely, offense, defense, and special teams, sometimes referred to as kicking plays. Of these three categories, the offense category is the category that includes the most variation and is often the category that is most often associated with the concept of play calling. Although there was a time in the history of football when offensive play calling may have been delegated to the team's quarterback, play calling is generally the responsibility of one or more coaches, usually the team's head coach or offensive coordinator.
Those who are involved with the game (e.g., coaches, players, personnel departments) strive to adopt a playing style that is best suited for their team. Historically, this has been accomplished by studying playbooks, video, attending clinics, and reading books authored by coaches who have had previous success in a particular system of plays. The plays may then be organized in a playbook, from which the coaches choose plays that fit the personnel and philosophy of their football team.
In practice, the plays are chosen from different systems using different vocabularies. Once the plays are chosen, the coaches adopt or create a vocabulary to identify the plays that may be unique to their football team. Using this vocabulary, the coaches may organize a group of plays into a playbook, a hardcopy or electronic collection of static images of plays. However, as the complexity of the game has evolved, the limitations of hardcopy playbooks have become more pronounced. Just as a few examples, coaches using a simple playbook often find it difficult to locate plays they have used previously. More generally, accessing a particular play at any point in time is difficult with a conventional playbook. The playbook may also provide limited support of searching for plays using relevant criteria, which can be a significant challenge when a large number of plays are being managed. Moreover, football is a game that requires multiple assistant coaches communicating with a head coach and issues of access, distribution, and coherency arise with hardcopy playbooks. In addition, as the popularity of football has increased and consumer electronics and technology have evolved, opportunities for interactive consumer involvement with the game, including vicarious coaching applications, have arisen.